Warriors suspend Jackson: The first step is admitting you have a problem

–To the surprise of precisely nobody in the universe except Warriors management–that’d be bumbling Robert Rowell, Don Nelson and Larry Riley (and their shills)–Stephen Jackson is acting up.

Holy Toledo, who could’ve predicted that! (Except everybody in the NBA, for about a year now.) Gotta love the Warriors, always about 4 steps behind everybody else.

For weeks, the Warriors pretended it didn’t matter that Jackson very publicly and very strongly wants to be traded. For weeks, the Warriors tried to persuade the outside world that Capt. Jack would be no problem, no problem at all in the locker room or on the court, despite his words.

Absurd, of course, but that’s the Warriors. They furiously denied that there was a problem with Monta Ellis–and still are trying to deny that one. They went bat-crazy denying last year that Rowell and Chris Mullin were splits-ville, until Rowell dismissed Mullin.

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The truth is not a big thing with Rowell-Nelson, which we know.

This time, the Warriors said that Jackson was just speaking emotionally, that he didn’t really mean it, that even if he wants out, Jackson respects Nelson and would of course play like a lion for him, and that SJax would absolutely be their captain among captains.

(Nelson said so, several times, and I’ve re-produced the quotes at the bottom of this item. It was ridiculous when he said it to ESteinPN, it was buffoonery when, just a few weeks later, Nelson said he’d try to trade SJax but that he and SJax would be great together this year if there was no trade. Now the whole Nellie-vibes-with-Jackson thing was obviously just a clear Nelson fraud.)

OOPS.

Last night, the Warriors announced that they’d suspended Jackson for two exhibition games for his actions during Friday’s game vs. the Lakers at the Forum, when he left the game after committing five fouls and getting a tech in about 9 minutes of play… and he never came back to the floor.

SJax might’ve gone to Vegas, might’ve watched the rest of the game from the Forum Club, might’ve suited up as a replacement referee for the second half, for all we know.

I think it’s safe to say that Jackson has re-affirmed his desire to be traded–privately, not publicly this time–about 100 times in the last week or so, and that Warriors management views SJax’s behavior on Friday as a statement: He wants to be such a thorn that they have to trade him.

But the important point to the suspension (which will cost Jackson $139,000, according to MT-2) is that Rowell-Nelson-Riley will now tell people that they’re acting tough, that they’re got a hold of this situation, that no player can talk to them like Jackson has, and they’re drawing the line.

And some of that has the rare Warriors virtue of actually being a little bit true and a little bit on the mark. Some of it. For once…

After all the silly, flattering lies they’ve told themselves and half-truths and ridiculous fables of franchise reconstruction, the Warriors might have to start facing a series of hard truths, and maybe this is a big Step One:

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Admit you have a problem.

And man oh man, do the Warriors have a problem. They have many problems, but right now, SJax is the huge and screaming one, indicative of so much else that is wrong.

But one problem at a time.

Maybe this is the start of Rowell and Nelson addressing the real issues and dropping the old Warriors’ self-destructive habit of just trying to cover up everything. Maybe not.

It’s really not in the Rowell-Nelson-Cohan playbook to be upfront and deal with issues head-on, but let’s see…

Because they got into this mess by lying. By being afraid of the truth. By being weak (giving SJax the three-year extension that does not start until next year).

And by promoting falsehoods and expecting everybody–including Jackson–to play along and pretend that the lousiness was fake and that the fakery was real.

Turns out, Jackson could not do that. He can’t play for a losing team, which he probably should’ve realized before he signed the extension, but it’s really not up to him to protect the team from its own stupidity. He took the money. That was not dumb.

If Jackson is acting poorly, he deserves whatever happens. But he’s also proven he’s smarter than Rowell, so I’ll still bet on SJax ending up on a good team and Rowell screwing this up even further.

Once again, the Warriors were lying to everybody else, and almost assuredly, lying to themselves. That’s how you get a coach who’s only in it for the power and the money and a general manager who isn’t qualified to do the job.

Oh yeah, and an incompetent team president who has committed, at minimum, 25 fire-able, franchise-killing offenses in the last 18 months or so.

How do they salvage this? Other than Cohan selling to a coherent owner and Rowell getting a pink slip….

1. Admit that they’re going to have to trade Jackson, even if it’s basically a give-away.

(As my wise brother pointed out last night: No sports franchise ruins the value of the players as thoroughly as the Warriors. Recently: They got nothing for Pietrus, little for Belinelli or Harrington. There’s more…. If SJax was an expiring contract, which he would’ve been if Rowell hadn’t given him the extension last year, teams would’ve been LINING UP to acquire him. Now… he’s almost untradeable, unless the Warriors take back bad money.)

2. Though I know they will want to, they shouldn’t brag that the Warriors are better without him, because they’ve won two exhibition games since he left the court in LA.

That’s a shill job. It’s not real. He’s an important player in this system. Don’t denigrate him. That’s what awful franchises do. The players in the locker room will know the truth. Don’t lie to them any more.

Just move him. Because he has to be moved.

3. Make sure, when they take back bad money for SJax, that it’s not TERRIBLE money.

Even if they get nobody of value in return, that’s better if the player’s on a short-term deal, than taking a mediocre player with a long-term deal, even if Nelson imagines the mediocre player can help. It doesn’t matter. The Warriors are looking at a 30-38-win season.

The important thing is to avoid stupidity at this point. Not get 1 or 2 wins better. AVOID STUPIDITY.

3. Repeat: Avoid stupidity. I could list the stupidity of the recent past, but I’ve already written too much and you can just go check back on the 1,000 previous Warriors items on this blog.

4. Do it swiftly. Do not let this turn into a Stephon Marbury situation, where he was suspended and just sort of floated around the Knicks World for months, with no resolution in sight.

Make a call. Stick with it. Don’t try to win the PR battle. They always lose that, anyway. Stupidity always loses. Don’t they know? I guess they haven’t yet figured that one out.

5. Forget about Nelson as the coach. He’s not the right guy for a young team. He was the right coach for Baron Davis and SJax. Once Baron was gone, SJax’s expiration date was coming up fast.

Now… All Nelson does is aggravate the current problems. He’s stubborn. He’s power-mad. He’s money-mad. He’s a king-sized problem all himself. If any of the players trusted management, they’d say that they wouldn’t want to play for Nelson any more.

Nelson is not the right person to coach an Anthony Randolph-led team. He should not start the season. It’s over for him. That’d be a tough one for Cohan and Rowell to swallow, with $12M left on Nelson’s deal, and I doubt they’d do it.

They’re afraid. They’ve habitually lied to themselves and to their fans and to their players. Step one: Admit there’s a problem. Step two: Fix it, even if it hurts. Or S-E-L-L.

—Here’s what Nelson said in his pre-camp media session on Sept. 25, 2009….

—-DON NELSON/

Q: Do you worry about Jackson being an issue in the locker room?

-NELSON: No. I legitimately love Jack. We’re good friends. I understand him. I think I do. He’s hard to understand all the time. But we get along fine. We have a good relationship. I’ll be able to coach him, it’s not a problem.

-Q: The comments didn’t surprise you, it was the way he did it…

-NELSON: Yeah, it was the way he did it.

-Q: You told Marc Stein that Jackson was still your captain… Is he definitely the captain?

-NELSON: Yeah, sure. Doesn’t have anything to do with being a captain or not. A guy that wants to be traded. He’s my captain. Still a leader on the team.

-Q: Even if he wants to go?

-NELSON: Well, yeah, it has no bearing. He’s a leader. He’s a leader either way. If he’s here, he’s going to try the best he can, to do what we want, and to win games. It’s not going to affect his performance, as far as I’m concerned.

(… And a little later, when talking about building this team…)

Q: Would having a disgruntled veteran mess up that process?

-NELSON: I don’t think Jack will affect anything. You know, Jack’s a competitor. He’s going to compete. He’s going to be Jack. And I can deal with Jack. I can coach Jack.
(And here’s Rowell, on media day, speaking to the Associated Press…)/

“We stick by Jack. Jack is Jack. … What that means is expect the unexpected. We have a lot of respect for him and his game. Sports is emotional. I’d rather have people who speak their mind than people who don’t.”